Visiting Our Nation's Capital

A few weekends ago (March 19ish) we went to Washington D.C. We loved it! As is becoming a theme with everywhere we go, we think this is a city we could live ;) It is a nice blend between feeling like a city but not having the rush, rush, rush pace of NYC. Maybe we will stop by DC for a few years on our way back to the South. (We may just migrate all over America until we are too old to do so ;)) We arrived in DC by bus on Friday afternoon, had some lunch and checked into our hotel. Our hotel had some pretty awesome amenities including a manager's happy hour with free drinks from 5PM - 7PM. So, we hit that up Friday night and then headed to Martin's Tavern, which is one of DC's most histoic, family-owned establishments that has been frequented by Presidents, media icons and regular folk like us. We split the Prime Rib special, which was pretty yummy, and had a few pints. Martin's Tavern is in the Georgetown neighborhood; we really loved walking through this area. Georgetown has a great hip/young vibe with a mixture of retail chains and boutiques plus local eateries and pubs. We got an early start Saturday morning with a workout in our hotel's very nice workout room and then enjoyed the complimentary breakfast buffet (more of those awesome amenities of our hotel). Our Saturday agenda was to try and hit as much as we could on The Mall. So we headed out for about a mile walk to the Lincoln Memorial. The Lincoln Memorial was amazing and both mine and Matt's favorite DC site. Being in the Lincoln Memorial evokes so much awe and reverence; I was choked up to say the least. Then we checked out the Korean War Memorial on our way to the WWII Memorial (this memorial was also pretty cool). We passed by the Washington Monument on our way to the Jefferson Memorial. After the Jefferson Memorial we went by the White House. You can't get too close to the White House, but we got some pics from where we were. Then we hit Cosi (YUM :)) for lunch.

The Lincoln Memorial

The Korean War Memorial

The World War II Memorial

The Jefferson Memorial

The Washington Monument

The White House

After lunch, we hit the Smithsonian Museum and the National Gallery on our way to the Capital. We hung out for a little bit on the Capital Lawn, then swung by the Supreme Court building for some quick photos. We were now all the way at the other end of The Mall from where we started and started making our way back. We got to stop by the National Botanical Gardens on our way back. While we did see lots of other really cool "important" stuff, this was probably my favorite site after the Lincoln Memorial :) Last but not least, we ended our site-seeing day at the Vietnam Memorial. This memorial was very inspiring and also caused a little bit of emotion-choked-up-ness. After the Vietnam Memorial, we were on our way back to the hotel.

The Capital The Supreme Court Building The Vietnam Memorial

A few pretty pics from the Botanical Gardens

We estimated that we walked 7 miles in one day! We had about a mile walk to and from The Mall (2 miles). The Mall itself is 1.9 miles, and we walked it up and back. We are now up to 6 miles. Plus, the Jefferson Memorial and the White House are both about a half mile or so off of The Mall - so 7 miles! Crazy! We definitely deserved our manager's happy hour that night :) After the happy hour, we went to the Italian resturant in our hotel for dinner where we enjoyed Mussels Risotto for an app (can't remember our main course but remember that it was yummy) and some Italian Pudding with Berries for dessert. We crashed (as you can imagine) as soon as we got to our room :)

Sunday morning we were pretty worn out, and leisurely enjoyed the breakfast buffet with some newspapers and magazines until it was time to check out and catch our bus back to NYC.

All in all it was a lovely weekend. Unfortunately, we were too early for the cherry blossoms (pretty much the reason we wanted to go to DC in March), and there were many other sites we didn't have time to see. We will definitely visit again!